Debts and Different Calls
by all.I.want.to.do.is.fly
Summary: She thinks she owes him a debt. He's never regretted making a different call. The most successful partnership of master assassins had to start somewhere. Mostly Movieverse.
1. Debts and Different Calls

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Based off a quote from the Natasha/Loki scene in the movie. Names come from the Black Widow profile on the Marvel website.

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Clint Barton was good at his job. When he had first been taken on as a SHIELD operative, a lot of people doubted they could trust a former circus freak. Now he was one of their best agents and if he didn't always sit down and shut up the way he should, it didn't matter much because he was the best shot in the world.

He hadn't always been an assassin. When he got to SHIELD he had been put on a lot of reconnaissance missions, higher ups giving him guns and telling him he needed to learn to shoot straight before he could do anything else. It wasn't that he was bad with guns; he was just a hell of a lot better once he had a bow in his hands. Eventually people started realizing that.

Clint was 21 the day he killed his first man for SHIELD. It was also the first day he heard himself referred to as "The Hawk." After that he continued down SHIELD's predetermined path for him, never asking many questions and always getting the job done. That is, until the file for Natalia "Natasha" Romanova came into his hands.

The first thing he noticed was her eyes. He didn't know where the picture had come from, but somehow the camera had gotten close enough for him to read the utter lack of expression in them. He knew those eyes, had seen them in the mirror for years, and he remembered that the only way they could look so dead would be if you had lost everything there was to lose.

The woman was dangerous; he could clearly read that in her long list of accomplishments. The Black Widow, they called her. Fascinating. He wondered if SHIELD had ever tried to recruit her. Chances were they probably hadn't thought that would be an option. He wasn't so sure. But then again, it didn't really matter what his opinion was. He had a job to do.

The plan was laid out for him on the flight to Russia. Clint was to wait on the rooftop across from her hotel and when he got a shot he was to take it. They weren't really concerned with hiding the hit. He took his orders grudgingly, an unfamiliar sense of unease falling over him.

None of them were expecting a kidnapping attempt.

Clint watched it happen through her window, fingers itching on his bow. His requests for orders on the comm were met with radio silence and without thinking he fired fours arrows in succession, taking out the men she was fighting. Her head whipped around and her eyes met his. Even over the distance he could see a spark flare in those dead eyes. It would have been easy for him to take the shot. Instead he found himself setting down his bow and motioning for her to join him on the adjacent rooftop.

He didn't know what he was doing. It was the first time he had ever directly disobeyed orders, but for some inexplicable reason he felt he had to at least speak to her.

She appeared in less than two minutes.

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"Who are you?" Natasha asked quietly.

"I think in this case you want to be asking who I work for," Clint responded carefully.

"Fine then. Who do you work for?" She shot back.

"SHIELD."

"And what does SHIELD want with me?" She murmured. From her defensive stance and concealed expression he could tell they both knew the answer to that.

He told her anyway.

"To kill you."

Natasha let out a short laugh.

"That is highly ambitious of them."

"For them maybe. Not for me," Clint replied.

"If you were going to kill me Agent Barton, I would already be dead. So why aren't I?"

He was momentarily surprised that she knew his name, but then again, his reputation was almost as well known as hers in their circles and he was the only master archer on the SHIELD payroll.

He smirked.

"Fancied myself a partner. You up for it?" He asked.

Clint hadn't realized he'd been thinking it until the words were out of his mouth. He hadn't worked with a partner before. Might be fun. He'd certainly prefer it to killing her.

Her eyes narrowed.

"You want me to work for SHIELD? How do you know that they would even take me?"

"They like to keep me happy." He paused as the chatter in his earpiece started up again. "Think about it Ms. Romanova. You have about five minutes before someone else comes in to try and finish my job."

He wasn't completely sure that she would agree at first, but after her eyes searched his and found he was completely sincere, she gave the slightest nod of her head.

"I accept your offer Agent. Take me to SHIELD."

With that Clint called in the situation to Coulson who threatened him with paperwork and disciplinary action but sounded slightly proud. The two assassins were picked up by a SHIELD team and brought back to the US where Natalia Romanova became Agent Natasha Romanoff. The rest, they say, is history.

He's never regretted making a different call.

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	2. Firsts

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter Summary: After becoming partners, Clint and Natasha have a lot of firsts. These are just a few.

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The first mission Clint and Natasha were assigned to as partners was a bit of a disaster, although not through any fault of theirs. One of SHIELD's informants flipped and disclosed all the information he knew about them to their target who thought it would be an excellent idea to have them kidnapped and killed. Needless to say that didn't go over well…for the target. Coulson was irritated that they had blown up the warehouse they were being held in but Clint figured he could deal with a little extra paperwork. After all, the explosion had gotten the job done and they hadn't even needed a rescue squad.

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The first time he kissed her was after their third successful mission. She punched him for it and he wound up in medical trying to come up with a better explanation for his broken nose.

The first time she kissed him was in the SHIELD gym during a training session. They were sparring and Clint had her pinned to the ground.

"I win," he whispered, his face close to hers.

Natasha's eyes flashed and he barely had time to register her slight movement before her lips met his. The kiss was different than he had expected, surprisingly soft and sweet in comparison to their fight. He lost himself in the taste of her, the feel of her hands sliding up his bare arms…and then, abruptly, he found himself on his back as she broke the kiss and smirked down at him.

She had him pinned.

"You were saying, Agent Barton?"

Clint tried to move, but found it nearly impossible. He sighed.

"Well played Tasha. Well played."

She released him and got to her feet, grabbing a towel before walking towards the gym showers.

"Maybe next time, Clint," she called over her shoulder.

Yeah. Next time.

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The first time he almost got killed on a mission was during an ambush in Lithuania. Somehow Natasha managed to get them to the rendezvous point in spite of the fact that he was quickly bleeding out. She never said anything about it and he never brought it up, but when she came to his room a week later after he was released from medical and kissed him, the look in her eyes and the pressure of her fingers on his pulse point told him that she meant it.

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Clint didn't remember when he had started trusting her enough to tell her about his past, but it was somewhere around the time Natasha had told him about hers. Regardless of when it had happened, somewhere between nightmares, missions, stolen kisses, and late-night discussions, he had fallen in love with her. And that was something of a first for him as well.

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	3. Budapest

Disclaimer: As usual, I own nothing.

A/N: Last chapter. It's been fun.

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Budapest wasn't supposed to happen the way it did. It should have been an easy job, especially since it was only meant to be reconnaissance. It was the first mission Clint and Natasha had worked together since her assignment to watch Tony Stark and Clint's stint in New Mexico. Of course, when it came to the two of them, nothing was ever easy.

The mission had gone to hell almost as soon as they had gotten off the plane. When they arrived at the first meeting point, they found their contact dead. A look had passed between them and Natasha's eyes had swept the building as Clint readied his bow. They had just started to move toward the exit when the first shot was fired.

It was fine at first. They tore through the first group of hostiles easily enough; after all, they were trained for these kinds of situations. After the third or fourth wave though, things began to get tricky. One of the fighters had a talent for throwing knives, which wouldn't have been a problem if Clint hadn't run out of arrows.

In the split second his attention had been directed toward his empty quiver, he hadn't seen the blade coming towards him. Natasha had pushed him out of the way but hadn't been able to completely block the weapon. It caught her across the side of her neck and sliced off a small section of her hair.

It wasn't long after that when a SHIELD rescue team arrived and removed the pair. Once they were in the air, Natasha collapsed. The cause was determined to be a poison that had been on the edges of the knife. The poison combined with other injuries she had sustained during the fight led the SHIELD medical staff to keep her in a medically induced coma for two days after their return.

Clint spent the entire time by her bedside. Coulson came by at some point and forced him to get his own injuries looked at. He vaguely remembered a speech about how none of it was his fault, but in his mind it was.

When Natasha woke up she told him to stop being an idiot and reminded him that he would have done the exact same thing if positions were reversed. Her words hadn't made him feel better, but after that she spent every night in his bed which at least kept the nightmares away.

He asked her to marry him and she turned him down. She cut her hair short to fix the damage and he eventually stopped dreaming about losing her.

A month after that they were Avengers and although he couldn't forgive himself for the things he had done while under Loki's control, he put his guilt toward wiping out the red in his ledger. Clint had never thought of himself as a hero and he knew Natasha didn't particularly see herself as one either. They were exactly as Loki had described them: liars and killers who worked for an organization of people who were no better than them in that respect. But if nothing else they had each other and maybe that helped them to be a little less lost.

It took a lot for them to adapt to being members of a team, especially when Stark Tower was deemed to be the Avengers headquarters and everyone moved in. However, slowly but surely Clint and Natasha found that the Avengers were more like a dysfunctional family than anything else and decided that maybe that wasn't so bad.

Sometimes Clint thought about how they had gotten to this point. He wondered when every part of his life had started including someone else. Eventually he realized that he didn't really care how it happened, but he was glad it had. And to think, it had all started because he decided to make a different call.

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